Sustainable Agriculture in the Vidarbha Region of Maharashtra, India: Dryland Methods Towards Food Security

Abstract

The Vidarbha region of eastern Maharashtra exemplifies the structural vulnerabilities of rainfed agriculture in semi-arid India, where smallholder farmers cultivating cotton, soybean, pigeonpea and sorghum on shallow Vertisol soils face recurrent moisture stress, fragmented landholdings and volatile commodity prices. This review synthesises peer-reviewed evidence published over the past decade on dryland agricultural methods relevant to food security in such rainfed tracts, drawing on literature concerning watershed development, soil and water conservation, conservation agriculture, crop diversification, agroforestry, climate-resilient cultivar development, and the institutional architecture of crop insurance, soil testing and farmer collectives. The review finds that integrated watershed management and in-situ moisture conservation measurably raise soil organic carbon and water use efficiency in semi-arid cropping systems, that conservation agriculture and legume intercropping improve resource use efficiency on Vertisol landscapes comparable to those of Vidarbha, and that diversification towards drought-tolerant pulses, sorghum and millets offers a viable complement to cotton monoculture. Institutional interventions, including the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana crop insurance scheme, the Soil Health Card programme and women-led self-help groups, show documented but uneven effects on farmer welfare, constrained by implementation gaps, low financial literacy and weak last-mile delivery. Agroforestry systems on degraded and marginal land demonstrate co-benefits for carbon sequestration, fodder supply and household income diversification. The review concludes that food security in Vidarbha depends less on any single technology than on the coordinated sequencing of water harvesting, soil health restoration, diversified and insured cropping, and strengthened farmer institutions, and it identifies persistent evidence gaps specific to the region that merit dedicated empirical attention.